Janet ‘Jessie’ Brodie (Crawford) Hepburn

1849 - 1941

When Janet Brodie Crawford was born on February 19, 1849, in Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, Scotland, her father, William Crawford, was 53, and her mother, Agnes (Orr) Crawford, was 39. She was undoubtedly born at what is now 35 Calder Street, an eight bedroom stone home (see below). This part of Calder Street is known as the Mill Brae as it leads to first large cotton mill in Lochwinnoch, but it also leads to the Calder Glen Woollen Mill owned by her father.

Below is a winter view of Braehead taken from a second floor window around 1905.

This was William’s second marriage. His first wife Margaret Ronald had passed away seven years previously. William had one daughter, Mary (1835)

by this earlier marriage, and one son named William with Agnes Orr before Jessie came along.  William Jr. was also born in Lochwinnoch in 1846, probably on Calder Street.

William Sr. was a woollen manufacturer, owner of the Calder Glen mill that employed about 150 people at its peak.  He had been in Lochwinnoch since at least 1827 when the mill was established. He was born in Beith, Ayrshire in 1796, son of a Master Wool Carder, his parents being William Crawford and Agnes Barclay. He had served an apprenticeship as a millwright in Greenock which he had started in the year 1802.

Jessie’s world growing up was quite small. Her families church, the Calder United Free Church, and the public school were beside each other about a quarter mile from their home. Heading southeast from the Crawford home, Calder Street changes to Church Street about halfway to the church.

Jessie married James Hepburn of Biggar on August 1, 1871, at the age of 22 at the United Church in Lochwinnoch.

According to her son James, Jessie’s brother William Crawford Jr.;

“had an office on Buchanan St., Glasgow for the sale of the output from

the wool mill. I still have a leaf of the office stationary. It is headed, ‘William Crawford & Son, Woollen Manufacturers”. It was through Uncle Willie (right) that my father was invited out for a weekend to Lochwinnoch where he met my mother. My father was then working as a salesman in the firm of Marne, Byars & Co. in Argyle St., Glasgow just around the corner of the street from the Crawford office. This was before he took up the business of a grain merchant and farm machinery agent ”.

William died on February 12, 1880, in Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, Scotland, when Jessie Brodie was 30 years old. His death was attributed, by some, to bad habits and the people that he hung out with.

James and Jessie lived in Biggar after their marriage, in rooms over the Hepburn bake shop. The building still stands at 161 High Street. James did try to work at the bake shop but was allergic to the flour dust.

Their son, James Thomas Orr Hepburn (J.T.O.H.), writes;

“When I was about two years old my father moved to Glasgow and we lived on Allison Street in Crosshill District for two years. But about 1879 we moved back to Biggar to the new house that was now finished on the North Back Road. Previously we had lived in the flat above Grandpa Hepburn’s baker’s shop on the main street where I was born.”

James’s father (right), also a James, was a baker and a railway contractor, and the Chief Commisioner (Mayor) of Biggar for a number of years. An alley led back from the bakeshop to North Back Road where James Sr. lived in Briar Cottage. It was on the right at the end of the alley at North Back Road and James Jr’s new home, Hawthorn Cottage, was just diagonally across the road. 

Transcription of writing on the back of the above photograph;

Old Photo taken at Biggar, Scotland by J. W. Hepburn about 1900

Grandfather James Hepburn's brick house at right of lane (called Hepburn's Close). James Hepburn's house facing the camera (J.T.O.H.'s father), with back road in front passing between the two houses. (Name of house: Hawthorn Cottage.) Garden fences in bad shape.

Photo taken looking up hill as the close descended to Biggar main street. J.T.O.H. lived in Hawthorn Cottage from 1878 to 1885.

James Jr. and Jessie had two children during their marriage both born in Biggar, Lanark; Agnes (Addie) 29th June, 1872 and Thomas 19th May, 1875.

Jessie’s father William passed away on December 18, 1881, in Lochwinnoch at the age of 85. Her mother Agnes passed away on April 9, 1891, in Lochwinnoch at the age of 81.

After the death of her husband, James Jr, in Glasgow, in 1894, Jessie sold their grain business and she moved with daughter Addie to the Crawford house on Calder Street Lochwinnoch. Twenty-two years later the old house of eight rooms was sold to the Lochwinnoch Gas Company. During that time her son, James Thomas Orr Hepburn (JTOH), spent time in Lochwinnoch during breaks in his education and between jobs. The picture on the right is of James, Jessie and Addie, taken at the back door of 35 Calder Street.  

Jessie and Addie moved to Sunnyside Cottage (below left) at 7 Johnshill, Lochwinnoch about 1914 which belonged to a James Dickie a cousin through the Orr family. James Dickie survived the sinking of the SS Persia in 1915 which took the life of William Orr of Kaim but James died soon after from the effects of the event. Jessie can be seen in the back garden of Sunnyside Cottage in the photograph on the right.

About this time Jessie and Addie took a trip to Vancouver Island, British Columbia to visit JTOH and his new family. The First World War broke out during their visit, so their trip home was a bit difficult.

The photograph above was taken during their visit to Vancouver Island in 1914. In the photograph are James Thomas Orr Hepburn with wife Margaret, son James and daughter Agnes Nelson, together with his sister Agnes (Addie) Jane (right) and mother Janet (Jessie) Brodie Crawford Hepburn. Jessie died on April 20, 1941, in Lochwinnoch at the age of 92, and was buried in the Lochwinnoch cemetery.